In My Absence
by Jehzavere
Summary: In the space of time without you, I thought many things...Muraki x Hisoka.


**Author's Note: A small drabble inspired by a late night RP session. **

True, they existed between life and death - as ghosts, shadows, reflections,  
angels- but they somehow managed to cling on to at least one part of thier  
former life, letting them carry a vibrance unknown anywhere else in the world of  
the dead. /He/ had existed long enough, however, to discover the truth.  
Death...death is silence. It is peace, the quiet rustle of a sigh. It is the  
feeling one gets when stepping alone in an ancient garden, the isolated, beautiful,  
but terrifying sense of eternity.

He, too, had finally lost most of the former spark that he once carried after  
death, he, too, now existed in the silent world of afterlife as quiet as the  
echo of a footfall in an abandoned hallway.

He had lost most of it, as many of his kind finally to, but he also had  
something to hold on to to - something that refused to let that final ember to die  
to ash and be done with the colors of his former existence.

He never went to earth anymore. True, if duty called, he would obey. They  
knew that, so they allowed him to stay, to fufill meaningless  
tasks, spend days, weeks, years on trivial research that was more formality than  
necessity.

But he smiled. He smiled, because like his name, like his birth -- he kept a  
secret. His secret, his precious, solitary hope that allowed that small flame  
of life to burn as everything else died around him. He /knew, and he waited.

He waited so long that he couldn't remember when the waiting began. He was  
patient, however -- he had eternity, and longer. He waited, because this was his  
due - the powers that be owed him no less. It was not arrogance that drove  
him to this conclusion, but instead a deep rooted conviction, an assurance he  
felt was afforded to him for giving up so much and taking nothing in return.

The waiting ended when one day, on a whim, he felt the need to feel a warm  
summer night. He stepped into the grounds of a world he no longer recognized,  
but was not troubled...it felt the same, and nothing could wash away what /had/  
been, and that's all the mattered.

His journey took him, as it once had before, to the place of dreams and  
sakura. He ran his hand over the branches, ran the petals over his lips, almost  
sobbing in relief when he realized that he hadn't truly forgotten the feel after  
all. When he heard a breath behind him - a soft catch barely distinguishable  
from the wind - he was surprised and not surprised at thier meeting again this  
way.

"I have been waiting"

A few words, spoken softly, aching...brokenly...and the other's man's  
stricken gaze softened, and he knew that his patience would be rewarded that  
night.  
The one he had been waiting for , the one he.../he/ would not run away again.

"Hisoka." The other approached him cautiously, carefully. Hisoka contented  
himself with merely staring at him, the pale glow of the older man's skin and  
hair gave him a feeling like... being drunk on opals. Swimming on the surface of  
the moon and drowning in a dark ecstacy. /Hisoka/. He had not heard his name  
spoken that way in a while...spoken in the language of that sweet liquid  
silver.

The other stopped in front of him, waiting, eyes emotionless. He, too, has  
perhaps been waiting his due. Waiting, without knowing. He was technically older  
than Hisoka, but Hisoka had been a shinigami longer, and he knew the way of  
this world better- he understood what one said to themself in the silence  
without even realizing it.

He reached forward a hand, shaking, and let it lay on that familair -beloved  
and hated- face. His fingers caressed the other's cheek, and he smiled. "You  
may try to run away, Muraki. But you know what the sakura does to us. One may  
try to run...but the other will always catch him."

Muraki other caught his hand, and his eye glittered like black ice.

"I know the futility of running. You and I both know that memory is  
unescapable." He sighed, then, the cold mask breaking, the years spent in  
eternity showing thier wear on his face. " It doesn't matter anymore. I've forgiven you."

"Oh?" This was all he need to know, it was all he had been waiting to hear.  
He leaned forward, and the spark he'd been nursing with patience and hope  
uncurled into his stomach in vein of liquid fire. /Desire/. A dreamy smile  
painted itself on his face as he absently recalled a word for a feeling that had grown  
vague enough to not quite remember, but remained too strong to ever really  
forget.

The other continued on, oblivious and knowing, both wanting touch but needing  
to absolve the past. "I realized...I realized, that when you...did it..."

Hisoka paused in his advance toward the other, old memories drawing  
themselves vividly before him. He paused, and waited...waited...

"Tsuzuki was looking the other way."

Hisoka smiled tightly, eyes half lidded as he pondered what the other's  
realization meant. "I do not understand why it matter what way he was looking  
when I killed you."

A hand reached out, hesitantly, and suspended in the air before them. Hisoka  
looked at Muraki, unmasked, showing him without words all that he felt, why he  
had waited, and that he would wait even longer -forever-...all because...

The confusion cleared from the doctors eyes and he let his hand rest on the  
shinigami's throat, tenderly tracing skin that had once been held so beloved.

"I had thought you had done it for him. Because you knew he was going to --  
and you didn't want him to suffer another's death."

Hisoka scowled, drawing the other near, patience now gone and burned by the  
new demand pulsing in his blood.

"Baka." His lips desperatly sought out Muraki's, kissing, licking, biting at  
anything that fell beneath thier touch. " I /did/ kill you because I knew that  
he was going to. But I /didn't/ do it for him. I didn't even do it for you.

He closed his eyes, and pressed his face against Muraki's chest. It was an  
eternity after the fact, it was countless years later -- and he finally allowed  
the tears to fall.

"I wasn't going to let anyone take you from me. Not /anyone/. But I knew I  
wasn't going to be able to stop him, so I did the only thing I could. I took you  
myself."

He trembled, collapsing at the feet of the one he'd searched for for so long,  
the one who had taken his life, the one who's life he had taken because  
nothing else mattered except protecting him in the only way that he knew how."

"I'm sorry."

Muraki's arms enfolded him, but the words were his own, torn from his very  
being, where he had kept them buried and stinging deep without his soul for  
endless years.

"Gods, Muraki..I'm sorry...so sorry...sorry, sorry..."

Pale lips against his ear, to painfully real to be a dream.

"Hush. Shhhh. It seems we are even now, shhh, my pet...my beautiful, my  
lovely..."

Death had not washed away the bloodstains, but the pain was dulled, only half  
remembered ghosts of a past that bound them in ways that could not be fully  
understood. Words once meant to hurt now filled Hisoka with an overwhelming  
relief, a torment that was both welcomed and cherished.

The earth is capricious, and meant for the adaptable, breakable, for the  
footsteps of the living. The wind had died and the grass was damp with heat and  
life, and Hisoka was tired and filled with a desire that no longer belonged to  
this world.

"Come" he whispered softly into Muraki's ear, catching a hand in his,  
speaking in a teasing tone that many sharing the length of his years had  
forgotten.  
"Come with me. Let me show you the places where I would wait and dream of you."

The doctor's eyes widened, the myriad of emotions playing on his face finally  
settling into a playful smirk and hungry eyes. He gripped the other's waist  
possessivly, giving Hisoka all the answer he need.

The shinigami smiled, and his voice, like memory, echoed and haunted the  
place where they met and were bound and would happily never escape from.  
"Come..come, let me show you...my place of dreams and wishes..."

"And then let's make it real."


End file.
